Forum - View topicGAME: Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
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StarDango
Posts: 99 |
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I haven’t gone that far in the game (I spend too many hours catching and training) but this review basically summarizes how I feel about it.
I’m having a TON of fun. I like the new Pokémon, I think the characters are charming, I like having the choice of how to progress, etc. As the review stated, the rewards you get from completing the story only enhanced your open world adventure and you learn more about the characters. So it feels rewarding actually seeking the story and gym leaders out. And the OST is an absolute banger. If we’re judging just on content and the number of things you can do, SV is by far the best Pokémon game for that. With that said- the game runs like a mess and graphically it mostly is too. The Pokémon and human models look great, but the environment can be…Yikes. I really don’t like that harsh lighting effect that they added. And the textures on places like the ground and mountains looks like they were copy and pasted. And the time of day randomly changes when I go in and out of battle, like going from sunny to sunset without a proper transition. And then there’s the random drops in FPS. Sometimes to an absolute crawl. I haven’t had my character mode glitch, but I have had my game crash. I wanted to catch a Rufflet in the dessert. But I guess it wasn’t supposed to be there because once I threw a Pokeball at it in the overworld, my game crashed. I was willing to defend SwSh because people were losing their minds over minor graphic details. But most of the bigger environments- especially the cities and towns- in SwSh looked great, the game was just (sadly) void of a lot to do. SV has the opposite problem in my opinion. It has way more content and the environmental designs are still good, but the low-quality rendering and graphics are holding it all back. Part of me thinks that not only do Gamefreak and the Pokémon Company need to stop trying to release mainline games in 3-4 years (seriously, slow down. Fans are not going anywhere)- they also need to stay within doing graphic designs that fit better with their resources and with Pokémon’s stylization. This is my own opinion- the graphical failings in SV is because the developers were trying too hard to make the game be styled like more modern open worlds. A lot of ”real world” textures and foliage designs for example. But they didn’t need to do that. Breath of the Wild and older Zelda games like Wind Waker, for example, can create breath taking worlds with stylized graphic designs. I’m only speaking for myself, but I’m not one of those fans who wants Pokémon graphic style to start looking like Xenoblade or even Horizon Zero Dawn. I just got the impression that’s what a few noisy critics are demanding and what some (or several) people at GameFreak are trying to go for, and it doesn’t seem necessary. Again, just my opinion and my own impression of things. Anyway- SV is still a fun game if you are a long time Pokémon fan like I am. The graphics and bugs haven’t prevented me from having a good time. But if you’re on the fence- just wait until it’s cheaper and gets a patch or three. |
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Thatguy3331
 Posts: 1795 |
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I have yet to beat the main stories yet because I've been spending hours of my time screwing around in the overworld catching and raising various mons. It's an oxymoron to say that I think this is structurally one of the best Pokémon's games while also being the absolute worst. The way the game lays itself out is pretty fun for me and while I wish you could turn off EXP share of that certain challenges scaled to your level there was very little that got in the way of my gameplay enjoyment. That even counts the bugs and glitches for the most part as I've never had my game crash or anything and haven't run into some of the really big ones as seen online. That said the fact that these glitches and bugs are even here and that the game was released in this state is a serious problem and much as I like the game it shouldn't be ignored.
I recalled being shocked that we were getting Gen 9 already when it was first announced as it had somehow still felt to me that Gen 8 just came out the door. I don't know *who's* decision it is to determine how fast we go through the generations or how often we have to get a mainline game but I think we're starting to hit a breaking point. I doubt they'd do so but I'd really wish they'd space out the time between these releases more, the rate at which Pokemon has been going as given me the impression that they feel their franchise's success is on a house of cards and while I want to say they definitely can afford to give themselves such time, I'm sure there's also a web of obligations and such to fulfil being such a big franchise. Either way the game's incomplete nature is a giant issue in what's otherwise been a pretty fun experience. Pity that. As I mentioned I haven't finished the stories yet but my impression of them is that it's overall very charismatic even if there's hardly anything deep going on here with either the plots or characters. This being Pokemon I'm pretty fine with that and hey, it wasn't boring. I think story wise out of the main games I still like Sun and Moon the most and I'm not holding my breath for that to be topped ever. |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3966 |
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Game Freak clearly doesn’t give a shit about our complaints. All they care about is making money. They could release a blank cartridge with a game coding book and it would probably sell millions of copies.
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MyMasterMatthew
Posts: 137 |
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I haven't played a Pokémon game since Black + White. Although I've been tempted (multiple times) to give the franchise I loved as a child another shot, the newer games just haven't seemed worth it. As an adult with limited time and money, I can't invest in every game I might be interested in anymore. I keep hoping for a new generation of Pokémon games to grab my attention, but that hasn't happened yet. Scarlet + Violet seemed promising, but I wanted to wait until after it released before making a decision. It sounds like I made the right call to wait. Fingers crossed for next time.
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Guile
Posts: 595 |
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Why would they care if people buy it anyway? Expecting gamers to actually care about these issues and stick to actual boycotts is a pipe dream. Especially when the target audience for Pokemon is aiming wider and wider to the point the core audience is no longer the main audience. Things have been that way since Pokemon Go. I used to be a big fan of Pokemon up until Sun and Moon, but it just isn't the same franchise anymore. Both the games and anime took a dramatic shift away from what they once were. I suppose I can't really blame Gamefreak from chasing the money, but it sure does suck. It also makes me glad other franchises I like never got that level of global success that they have no choice but to betray themselves. And it's clear even multiple technical issues and problems isn't enough to stop people from supporting them. Consumerism is a slow and insidious killer. |
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Lostlorn Forest
 Posts: 544 Location: USA |
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I'm graced to have experienced few performance issues going into the game, so barring the technical side of things, this game is a refreshing return to form for me after the absolute fiasco that was Sword and Shield. The open worldness puts to shame the literal straight line that was the Galar region, even if a bit late to the game. The world feels massive, though once again falling into the problem of having not much to do once you've caught them all.
It doesn't bother itself much with the story, but they do try. Also, it doesn't go out of its way to offend me, such was the case with Galarian Hau stopping my journey every time I turn a darned corner or his Annoying Poketuber™ energy Champion brother existing to remind us cHaRiZaRd. Seriously, the whole game now stands to me as just one fat aftershock of the 2016 Go hype, plagued with GF's fumbled transition to a new system - and I'm so happy they've appeared to move past it. S/V characters and world breathe human to me again (even if the execution leaves a lot to be desired), so I appreciate that. When I managed to look past the tumultuous release I would say this is the most fun I've ever had playing a Pokemon game. With the hellish release cycle landscape being as it is I'm hoping GF can figure a way around it, because this is otherwise not sustainable. |
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oilers2007
Posts: 100 |
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-Ugly art.
-Ugly characters. -Ugly environments. -Lazy Future/Past Pokemon taking up slots that don't even have names. -Most importantly, ugly outfit. It's like Gamefreak saw all the complaints about character customization and decided to take their ball and go home out of contempt. "Ok, you get NO outfit customization now, enjoy your ugly school uniform. Also no skirts because fudge you". How can you have an anime school game with ugly uniforms and no skirts? It's unreal. Gameplay wise it's basically Arceus but nowhere near as good. A fake open-world where all the areas and Gyms are static levels so you can say it's open world but if you try to tackle the 5th Gym first you can't really compete unless you grind up to that level. May as well do them all in order at that point. People already put out a 'correct order' map online. I was optimistic after Legends Arceus but this is 40 steps back from that game. If they ever make another Legends game in that style I'll play that, but the mainline games are just so disappointing these days. I'd rather go back to having no character customization if it means we get good looking characters again. The character just look like Metaverse avatars now and don't look like Sugimori at all. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4427 Location: New York |
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Is it wrong to compare this to Cyberpunk 2077, which at its core was a pretty good game, but one so plagued by bugs and errors that it was a complete mess? Cyberpunk became a good game eventually thanks to a year's worth of patches and an anime that got people interested in it. Would the game be good if it got optimized properly? Because most of what I've seen indicates that it would be.
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puggles
Posts: 16 |
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Don't think I'm explicitly defending Sword and Shield here, but Team Yell at least had personality and unique designs. Team Star is literally just other students with a bicycle helmet with star goggles. They are hands down easilly the lamest team so far, and I hated Team Yell as well and found them lame and miss when rivals and the villain teams were actually antagonistic. But Team Skull did the whole 'delinquent' thing better.... And that's really the biggest issue with the game, besides all the performance and bugs and glitches of course. Scarlet and Violet lacks personality and charm. No style at all. The art is so bland and ugly. There's only a handful of appealing looking characters like Nanjamo, Meloco, and Poppy. For a series that's always been known for amazing character designs it's depressing. |
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Yune Amagiri
 Posts: 963 Location: France |
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When it comes to the Team Star i like to think their concept is actually worth praising ( let's put something as subjective as chara design out of the equation ), we had a big bad organization(s) whose purpose was to capture the legendary and rule the world for 6 generations, then a self-centered dropout and his henchmen who turned to delinquency because he couldn't realized his dream so he tried to interfere with those trying to become what he couldn't on Gen 7 and a group of unruly supporters disconnected from reality which were excessively worshiping their idol by sabotaging her opponents in Gen 8.
Now in Gen 9 we have a group of bullied who created an intimidating facade to overcome their bullies and fight the previous corrupted school management, compared to all the previous team ( at least those from canon games ) this one had a rightful reason to exist, this time they didn't make us fight "bad" guys. |
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Suxinn
 Posts: 245 |
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I think forcing the game to come out just ten months after Arceus to make it in time for the holiday rush is what did it. The general Pokemon release schedule of one game every year or two was already unsustainable back with SwSh, and that issue has only been exacerbated with Covid and a new Legends series. (I thought when they offloaded the Diamond & Pearl remake to Ilca that they were giving themselves more room to work on future mainline games, but, nope, it was for the new Legends line.) Anyway, I grabbed Violet a few days after release but haven't gotten around to playing it. From what I hear, some folks suspect that there's a memory leak issue with these games, so the longer you spend playing them at a time, the worse the performance, and the more likely the crashes. I'm hoping for a patch to at least iron out the most major of issues before I jump in. |
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crazieanimefan1
 Posts: 410 Location: Auburn, AL |
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Glitches aside, I've enjoyed the game so far. The storylines of the bullying and the young man trying to heal his dog in other means...that got me. It felt real...guess since I had a past history of being bullied. Plus, the language teacher is rather hot...lol
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RobbiRobb
 Posts: 48 |
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I have to admit I haven't actually played the game that much, because I didn't have that much time until now - but I do know a lot about this game because I spent most of that time digging through the game, collecting data and adding it to a wiki. And while I have to agree that it isn't the second coming of Christ nor the best Pokémon game I have ever played, it does have something distinct that takes it above the other games we've had in the past. And no, I'm not talking about the story which is about what you can expect from a Pokémon game or the graphics that are average at best, janky at worst. I'm talking about the experience of finding and catching Pokémon in the wild, which is probably better than ever.
For many years Pokémon were always the big mystery, hidden in the grass. You would never know what you would get until you stepped onto something. The entire grass field had one small encounter table with a handful of Pokémon you could get, it wasn't anything special but it worked and people enjoyed it - but always wished for something more open world. Since then we've seen many iterations on that formula, Pokémon GO introduced random spawns in the real world, Let's GO brought those grass fields to live by having the Pokémon spawn visibly in the overworld. Pokémon Sword and Shield, for the first time in the main games, had static encounters in the wild area and the dlc regions. Back then the wikis really struggled to get the data on those encounters up and I remember using GeoGebra (math software for visualizing 2D and 3D spaces) to get a sense of what spawns where. That was probably a few hundred spawners in total and I remember it taking days or even weeks to cover all Pokémon. I was worried about future games, if they would use similar techniques. Because there is no way to get that across on a bigger scale. And then Legends: Arceus released, redefining what it means to have a world populated by Pokémon. Almost 9k spawners across five different areas, all with different probabilities at different times in different weather. The result was that no traditional way of presenting information was usably any more on this scale. Almost every site out there that documents anything about Pokémon switched to some kind of map as a reprensational form for the locations. And now Scarlet and Violet did the same - but bigger. More than 100k spawners, placed across the entire map. And let me tell you, that's here to stay. Probably not the growth, because we've hit the physical limit of the consoles, but the way Pokémon spawn will stay the same. And honestly, from a player perspective, it's amazing. There are so many spawners all around you, there is guaranteed to be some Pokémon close to you. No longer is it that empty, lifeless world. Everywhere something is moving. It just feels alive and I'm happy with that. Of course, from a wiki perspective that is the ultimate nightmare, I've now spent two weeks trying to find a form to represent this huge amount of data and I'm just slowly getting somewhere. But imagine telling someone 20 years ago that this would be where Pokémon is today. A huge open world with hundreds of species spawning at thousands of places. It's a big step forward to what people might call the ultimate Pokémon game. We're not yet there, but we're one step closer. Sadly the bugs and crashes are a big issue right now and knowing Pokémon, GameFreak and Nintendo there is at least some chance they will never get fixed. Their track record on fixing bugs in past games, even those that had internet connection and got updates, isn't good. But I hope at least some of the more jaring issues will get fixed to make it an enjoyable game. Because it might very well be remembered as the game the carved the path for future open world Pokémon games. Because while it feels the same as Legends: Arceus, its approach under the hood is different, meaning it is infinitely expandable in the future. |
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FireballDragon
 Posts: 684 |
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There is a LOT of lag in these games, and it really tends to piss me off. Other than that, I'm having absolute unadulterated fun. The open-world element is a nice breath of fresh air, though I wish enemies did sort of scale to your progress, the added textures and animalistic behavior of Pokémon really add to them feeling more real in their own way, the story is actually fairly interesting, though this isn't the kind of game one plays for the story, and yeah, the music is a bop. I think it might have to do with Toby Fox working on the soundtrack, though I wonder if that took a lot of time away from him working on the next chapters of Deltarune. There wasn't any DLC for Legends, but I'm fairly certain there might be some here eventually. I wonder if there's gonna be a Mystery Gift deal to be able to get the Starmobile Revavroom?
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boldulysses
Posts: 87 |
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Great review and this sums up the way I feel about the game also. Really hoping they're focusing on resolving the performance issues post haste and not resting on their laurels given the game's healthy sales figures. First round of DLC should be added outfit customization, IMO. |
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